Necromunda The Sump: General hobby venting thread (Beware: old men shouting at clouds)

I'd be surprised if Tolkien hadn't nailed down their origin. Having read and mostly forgotten the contents of the The Silmarillion, Tolkien didn't mess around with "it may have happened several ways" or "it's a possibility that this happened"... it strikes me if he'd decided that was how Orcs were originally made, he said so.

And if you're a character in one of his stories, and you ask an obscure question, someone nearby will always be ready and willing to explain - at great length and in excruciating detail - exactly what happened...
 
I think it was more that in his drafts he went back and forth between several different origin stories. And as a devout Catholic he apparently struggled with the concept of someone born irredeemably evil.
 
In regards to creature alignments in Rime of the Frostmaiden, a product for 5th D&D, it´s with two exceptions just like in products for 3rd D&D.

Kobolds (INT 8):
Any alignment possible.

Ice Troll (INT 7):
Chaotic evil.

Yeti child (INT 6):
Chaotic evil.

Verbeeg marauder (INT 11):
Neutral evil.

All Duergars:
Lawful evil.

Goblins:
Not stated in the module but Google says goblins are neutral evil in 5th D&D.


So one of the exceptions are the kobolds. In the module they are squatting in a mine and thus have chased of the miners. The module insists that there has been no casualties when the kobolds took over the site. So what kind of alignment do we give them for chasing off workers and preventing them from making a living? Would this look good on a curriculum vitae? Lets see. Would any good character do such a thing? No. Would a neutral good character do such a thing? Nope. Would a true neutral character do such a thing to create an equilibrium of interests? Nope as there is no such motivation to be gleaned from context of what is going on in the module. This means running off the yokels would be considered evil.

I would suspect the writers didn´t attach the evil label to the kobolds because of their "cute" trait. There are also diminutive mind flayers in this book, which are known to eat peoples´ brains, and they don´t get the evil trait either. Lets take a look in the monster manual of 3rd D&D what kind of alignment creatures receive who eat brains of sentient folks: It says usually lawful evil. Oops, what a surprise.


So there we have it folks. Assigning an alignment to a race is still a thing in modern D&D which is not a bad thing but simply the result of pattern recognition. You pillage, plunder, abuse and slay folk without provocation or justification? Then you go into the monster manual and get the evil trait assigned to you.
 
Burnt Umber Acrylic paint.
What the hell is going on there?
I can’t seem to find stockists for it recently.

My usual go to for cheap student grade artist acrylics is the discount shop here in the UK called “The Works”. However for some reason they’ve stopped stocking it (and sienna too) in their stores...

I had a look in our local Works yesterday. The really cheap (and thick) Crawford & Black range used to have a burnt umber, but now seems more limited:


26-02-08 Works (1).JPG


They do have another - wider - range of Liquitex paints though, which includes several browns:

26-02-08 Works (2).JPG


I have seen this brand before, but think it was elsewhere (The Range? Hobbycraft?) - I think they're relatively new to The Works.

They're more expensive than the C&B ones, but still much cheaper than miniature paints. No idea whether they're any good.
 
Last week I ordered two Vietnam War books spontaneously when visiting the inner city. One of the books turned out to be written by AI with the title of:

Vietnam War - The Story of an Infantryman in Vietnam War by Sandra Koch.

Yes, it was bad as you might expect. It promised to be the experience of an infantryman during the war but turned out to be an atrocious attempt at a history book. Expressions were off, citations were inconsistent and incomplete, and when listing war sites some of them were being repeated. In addition in some instances instead of the letter "c" a special character was used. Font size was too large and the heading of subchapters were done poorly.


Examples of gibberish:

1. In regards to the Dien Bien Phu battle:
"The French were fighting against the approaching French."
Haters will say I don´t understand the concept of a mirror match.

2. Lyndon B. Johnson at a speech:
"We´re not about to send American boy 9 or 10 miles away from our home to do what Asian boys need to be doing for us."
A single boy should be enough, if he is Rambo. 9 or 10 miles away?! First you would write it as "nine or ten miles" and second Vietnam being so c,lose to Texas (Johnson´s home state) is just a pun at Americans being bad at geography.

3. More about the president:
"Johnson would reply to Johnson that Johnson changed his mind."

4. Gulf of Tonkin incident:
"Turner Joy was firing on the Maddox and Turner Joy at that moment."
So it was just a military exercise? And the first ship shot itself too? Jesus!

I read the damned thing to page 57 and then head back to the inner city today to give the book back. I didn´t even had to convince the woman at the book store with my prepared evidence (a full A4 page of lunacy) that this book was AI slop. So I got my money back without any trouble.
 
That's really sad that real books are being published of absolute drivel. Have you tracked it down on Amazon etc and posted a review stating it's AI written slop to warn others?
 
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That's really sad that real books are being published of absolute drivel. Have you tracked it down on Amazon etc and posted a review stating it's AI written slop to warn others?
I just tried but my Amazon account, which was made and never used by me several years ago, "does not meet the minimum eligibility requirements" for Amazon.
 
Last week I ordered two Vietnam War books spontaneously when visiting the inner city. One of the books turned out to be written by AI with the title of:

Vietnam War - The Story of an Infantryman in Vietnam War by Sandra Koch.

Yes, it was bad as you might expect. It promised to be the experience of an infantryman during the war but turned out to be an atrocious attempt at a history book. Expressions were off, citations were inconsistent and incomplete, and when listing war sites some of them were being repeated. In addition in some instances instead of the letter "c" a special character was used. Font size was too large and the heading of subchapters were done poorly.


Examples of gibberish:

1. In regards to the Dien Bien Phu battle:
"The French were fighting against the approaching French."
Haters will say I don´t understand the concept of a mirror match.

2. Lyndon B. Johnson at a speech:
"We´re not about to send American boy 9 or 10 miles away from our home to do what Asian boys need to be doing for us."
A single boy should be enough, if he is Rambo. 9 or 10 miles away?! First you would write it as "nine or ten miles" and second Vietnam being so c,lose to Texas (Johnson´s home state) is just a pun at Americans being bad at geography.

3. More about the president:
"Johnson would reply to Johnson that Johnson changed his mind."

4. Gulf of Tonkin incident:
"Turner Joy was firing on the Maddox and Turner Joy at that moment."
So it was just a military exercise? And the first ship shot itself too? Jesus!

I read the damned thing to page 57 and then head back to the inner city today to give the book back. I didn´t even had to convince the woman at the book store with my prepared evidence (a full A4 page of lunacy) that this book was AI slop. So I got my money back without any trouble.
Try "The Things They Carried", written long before AI :D